Catherine Breillat has elected to omit the erect penises this time round. Photograph: David Sillitoe / Guardian

Catherine Breillat is a past master at making films that shock and disgust in equal measure. Even in her native France, where graphic sex can sneak under the cinematic radar as high-minded art, Breillat has trouble financing her films. A quick scroll through her archive - unsimulated sex courtesy of porn star Rocco Siffredi in Romance, teenage rape and murder in Fat Girl and Anatomy of Hell adapted from Breillat's own novel, Pornocratie - should give you a fair idea why financiers and distributors aren't exactly queuing up to back her films. They might, however, have to think again once they see her latest effort.

For her eleventh outing at the cinema, Breillat has ditched her own explicit material and instead adapted an 1865 novel by Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly. Set in the 1830s, The Last Mistress is a classic tale of a man caught between the twin poles of Madonna and whore, fidelity and passion. Bankrupt aristocrat Ryno de Marigny marries virginal heiress Hermangarde but can't break away from a destructive relationship with his mistress Vellini.

The subject matter isn't a million miles from Breillat's usual preoccupation with female sexuality but The Last Mistress has, unlike most of her earlier films, real psychological depth. And for once, Breillat's characters keep their clothes on and their engorged genitals out of our eyeline.

There are few directors less likely to make a costume drama than Breillat and yet The Last Mistress shows the same well-honed eye for period detail, shifting sexual politics and social change as Patrice Leconte's Ridicule or Patrice Chéreau's La Reine Margot. There are none of the set pieces of classic French costume dramas - no cast of a thousand extras trussed up in crinolines and frockcoats - but The Last Mistress is all the better for that. Even the judges at Cannes seemed to think so, including Breillat in the official competition for the first time last year.

As she prepares for her next film, Bad Love, Breillat would do well to reflect on The Last Mistress's success. With Naomi Campbell and fraudster Christophe Rocancourt lined up to star in an adaptation of Breillat's own novel, love might not be the only thing to turn bad. Campbell and Rocancourt will be in their first leading roles and delivering their lines in both English and Chinese. Much as Campbell is well cast for an exploration of exhibitionism and explosive sexuality, I'd rather see Breillat bring her uncompromising gaze to someone else's novel. I'm guessing the censors would too.